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bioRxiv · 10.1101/199992

Droplet-based microfluidic analysis and screening of single plant cells

Yu, Z.·Boehm, C. R.·Hibberd, J. M.·Abell, C.·Haseloff, J.·Burgess, S. J.·Reyna-Llorens, I.
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Abstract

Droplet-based microfluidics has been used to facilitate high throughput analysis of individual prokaryote and mammalian cells. However, there is a scarcity of similar workflows applicable to rapid phenotyping of plant systems. We report on-chip encapsulation and analysis of protoplasts isolated from the emergent plant model Marchantia polymorpha at processing rates of >100,000 protoplasts per hour. We use our microfluidic system to quantify the stochastic properties of a heat-inducible promoter across a population of transgenic protoplasts to demonstrate that it has the potential to assess gene expression activity in response to environmental conditions. We further demonstrate on-chip sorting of droplets containing YFP-expressing protoplasts from wild type cells using dielectrophoresis force. This work opens the door to droplet-based microfluidic analysis of plant cells for applications ranging from high-throughput characterisation of DNA parts to single-cell genomics.

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Yu, Z., Boehm, C. R., Hibberd, J. M., Abell, C., Haseloff, J., Burgess, S. J., Reyna-Llorens, I.. 2017-10-08. Droplet-based microfluidic analysis and screening of single plant cells. https://doi.org/10.1101/199992

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